After Arlington Pride cancellation, city navigates relationship with LGBTQ+ community

Without the drag queens, community vendors and rainbow displays typical of Arlington Pride each June, city officials and LGBTQ+ leaders expressed a mixture of uncertainty and cautious optimism for their evolving relationship.

The annual festival usually marks Tarrant County’s largest, most public celebration of Pride Month. This June marks the first since 2021 without an Arlington Pride event.

Organizers announced the cancellation in December, saying the event would remain suspended unless Arlington City Council reinstated antidiscrimination policies explicitly protecting LGBTQ+ residents. The cancellation followed the council’s 5-4 vote against reinstating an antidiscrimination ordinance initially passed in 2021.

In an interview in early June, event organizer DeeJay Johannessen said he stands by the decision last year to cancel the event. Johannessen is the CEO of the HELP Center for LGBTQ+ Health, which hosts Arlington Pride.

“I regretted having to make that decision — not the decision itself — because no matter what, we owe people safety,” Johannessen said. “If anything had happened because we went forward with it, that’s the thing I could never get over.”

Canceling Arlington Pride hurts the city’s LGBTQ+ residents more than it sends a message to the city, Arlington Mayor Jim Ross said, adding that he nonetheless understands the decision to protest the ordinance suspension.

“Pride was bringing people from everywhere,” Ross said. “ I am still convinced we are a very inclusive city, and in spite of the changes we’ve been having to make, so I hope we can get back to Pride coming back one way or another.”

DeeJay Johannessen, CEO of the HELP Center for LGBTQ+ Health, reacts during an Arlington City Council meeting Feb. 10, 2026. (Christine Vo | Fort Worth Report) Last year, Arlington Pride drew about 15,000 to the Levitt Pavilion’s lawn for an evening of free festivities including performances from Trixie Mattel and Ginger Minj, former RuPaul’s Drag Race performers.

Pride Month, observed annually in June, honors the 1969 Stonewall Riots in Manhattan, a series of demonstrations by the LGBTQ+ community in response to the police raid on the Stonewall Inn gay bar.

Johannessen faced a range of responses after canceling the event: Some expressed full support and sympathy, while others called to shift the event’s focus. Although he’s not opposed to protesting as a Pride demonstration, Johannessen said he didn’t want to shift the festival “from a celebration to a protest then hopefully back.”

“The culture of Arlington Pride has always been a celebration,” he said.

The festival launched in 2021 as a small, intimate picnic outside the HELP Center in downtown. It quickly grew, which Johannessen and others noted as a sign of support for Tarrant’s LGBTQ+ community as the event drew attendees from across North Texas.

“That was an amazing growth in such a short amount of time ... and that shows that people really do love having a Pride (festival) in Arlington,” said Arlington resident Roger Calderon, the board president of Trinity Pride Fest, a nonprofit LGBTQ+ Pride festival held annually in Fort Worth’s Near Southside.

The monthslong saga concerning the antidiscrimination ordinance began with an executive order issued in January 2025 from President Donald Trump, which railed against programs deemed “radical and wasteful.” That order included a federal directive threatening cities’ federal grants if they were to keep diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

The directive forced an evaluation of all city programs, Ross said, and the ordinance was found to not be in compliance.

In September, city council voted 6-2 to suspend the ordinance and adjust the language behind the Unity Council.

In February, the council voted to bring a new version of the ordinance back. Unlike the previous ordinance, that version did not contain explicit protections for sexual orientation and gender identity, or a stipulation that local officials investigate discrimination complaints.

Ross said the second option brought to the council, to reinstate the ordinance with a clause to suspend it if deemed legally necessary, was the best solution.

“I was outvoted,” Ross said. “We lost that 5-4, so then I was left with a couple of options: do nothing at all and allow it to remain suspended, or try to find a compromise of sorts.”

Arguments against bringing the ordinance back at the time ranged from whether it provided the protections that supporters claimed it had to whether it was the municipality’s right to step in.

“I believe this is a governance decision,” council member Bowie Hogg said before the February vote. “I do not believe an ordinance is effective. I do not believe it’s enforceable, and I believe it gives false hope and false protections to people, especially when we’ve balanced that with what legal opinions we’ve received.”

City officials have maintained an appearance of support for the LGBTQ+ community. On June 1, a post from the city’s Facebook account saying Arlington is “proud to be a welcoming, diverse community” drew over a thousand comments from both pro- and anti-LGBTQ+ residents.

Some referenced Arlington Pride’s suspension and the antidiscrimination ordinance’s changes. In response, Ross promised the lack of an ordinance hadn’t changed his desire to have a city that welcomes everybody.

“I’m not going to change my behavior because of the necessity of having to change the antidiscrimination ordinance,” Ross said.

The mayor often attended Arlington Pride, where he’d present a mayoral proclamation recognizing June as Pride Month onstage at the Levitt Pavilion. This year, he made the proclamation inside council chambers June 9.

Ross is cautiously optimistic about bringing a Pride event back to Arlington.

“I love what the HELP Center has done for this city, but I’ll tell you, the HELP Center and DeeJay don’t represent the entire LGBTQ+ community,” Ross said. “I have a lot of friends who will say, ‘Listen, we wish Pride was still here,’ and I’m hoping we can bring it back. If it’s not through the HELP Center, maybe it’s another way, but I’m optimistic. We have some people who are excited about it, and I think it’s an important part of who we are.”

Emphasizing that “even in the best of times, running a Pride organization in Texas is not easy,” Calderon said he is disappointed to see a backslide in support for the community.

Earlier this month, county commissioners voted 3-2 against a resolution to honor the HELP Center as the county’s largest health center focused on LGBTQ+ services. In addition to sponsoring Arlington Pride and hosting other community events and fundraisers throughout the year, the center administered more than $70 million worth of medication, clinical services and supportive care to 7,000 patients in 2025.

Democratic county commissioner Alisa Simmons, who represents Arlington but is seeking the countywide judge seat, said she introduced the resolution to “honor an organization that has improved lives across Tarrant County.” Republican County Judge Tim O’Hare, who faces Simmons on the November ballot, voted against the resolution with the two GOP commissioners, saying he didn’t want to put the Tarrant County “name and seal behind a divisive social agenda that glorifies a group that supports transitioning children.”

Although saddened by the loss of Arlington Pride, Calderon said he understands and supports the decision to cancel by the HELP Center, which sponsors Trinity Pride. He expects the smaller Fort Worth festival to naturally absorb some of the Arlington event’s would-be attendance but urges LGBTQ+ residents and allies to continue Pride beyond the June festivities.

“We may not have a celebration the second week of June in Arlington, but how we show up as a community is by showing up at these meetings. It’s by making our voices heard,” Calderon said. “Sometimes I feel like that is getting lost, it’s getting lost in the big showy event of Pride and not in the daily work that it takes to maintain pride throughout the year.”

Johannessen wants more LGBTQ+ residents to become “strategically civilly engaged,” noting that all Tarrant voters have county, state and federal representatives on the November ballot. Beyond the midterm elections and next year’s mayoral and council races, he emphasized a need for more active participation in the volunteer boards and commissions advising city leaders.

“The most important thing is for us to show up and be present on a day-to-day basis. We’re not going to change certain elected officials’ minds,” Johannessen said.

Ross said that he can’t speak for other county or city officials when it comes to the county’s relationship with the LGBTQ+ community, but that he is committed to making people feel welcome in Arlington, and he thinks most residents feel that way too.

“I don’t hide or try to suppress my desire to be inclusive of all people — Black, Latinos, Muslims, Asians, gays, straights, Christians, Buddhists,” Ross said. “I don’t care. I’m not ashamed of the fact that I believe we’re all God’s creatures, and I think I’m very confident that the majority of Arlington feels the same way.”

Cecilia Lenzen is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org. 

Chris Moss is a reporter for the Arlington Report. Contact him at chris.moss@arlingtonreport.org. 

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